Saturday, March 19, 2005

A Different Side

Went on another convoy yesterday. This time we also went to Magic Mountain. It is a distant location on the very top of the highest hill on the Iran/Iraq border. I took some incredible pictures that just don’t capture the scope. Standing on that high mountain top, I could view literally thousands of square miles which all shared on common trait; they are completely useless. Ok, so beauty might be a use but thinking deeper I realized that most, if not all, of what we hold as beautiful is actually useless. Take for example the natural terrain that I was looking at. Desert.

Not good for building, mining, living, anything but viewing. Art, modern art especially, serves no functional purpose but is yet beautiful. But you may think that the new whatever make of sports car is a work of art and very useful. I would say that the beautiful *part* of the car is pretty useless…. The body and paint are mostly for esoteric appreciation instead of designed for function. Contrast that with a HMMWV.

My point is that anything beautiful is useless. But is that not where we put our deepest assets? In the useless? A picture drawn by a child treated like a Picasso.

A ring on a finger, a virgin forest, a trophy…… Functional is ugly, useless is beautiful. We work so hard to create and maintain beauty when we just need to be less functional.

On that mountain top was a dog. How it got there I have no idea, there were nomads with flocks miles away at the bottom, so maybe from there. They named the pup, ironically, Paris Hilton. We all took pictures with Paris, and she ended up following me around since I played grab-the-paw with her. That is the universal game amongst dogs.. Paris didn’t care a bit about the view.

2 Comments:

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir~

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. ~Albert Einstein ~

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir~

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. ~Albert Einstein ~